Before Tesla, there were inventors who dared to dream of bringing the world into a new age of fully electric cars. Let’s look at what they made and how it helped pave the way for the electric cars we have today.

Electric P1 by Porsche

Ferdinand Porsche has made a huge difference in the car business. At age 22, he made the first electric hybrid car in 1989. The hybrid engine made 3hp and let the car go as fast as 21mph. Ferdinand wrote P1 next to every part of his first design to show that it was his first design. The famous race car company found the car in a shed where it had been left. The car is now in a museum in Stuttgart, Germany. The design of the car is certainly something to see.

Henney Kilowatt

One of the first cars that did well was made by two companies, Emerson Radio and Henney Motor Company. The team was able to sell almost fifty of these cars that had been fixed up, but they went out of business in 1961, just two years after they opened.

The CitiCar

The cheese wedge car, which some people thought looked funny, was supposed to represent a future that would help people in the city go green. The car was made to hold two people and connect to the national power grid. This electric car cost $3,500, and it could go as fast as 35 miles per hour.

NASA’s electric Lunar Roving Vehicle

Probably one of the most important lessons we learned from a work of art that isn’t as well known. People became interested in EVs and battery research because of the Lunar vehicle.

It’s not easy to guess what will happen with electric cars in the future. Still, based on what we saw at the turn of the last century, electric cars have been competing with gas-powered cars and have easily taken over a third of the U.S. market. We’re looking forward to more innovations that will get us to a time when everything runs on electricity.